Two weeks ago Duane Stanley began his description of a visit to the State Fair this year and the memories it evoked of Grandpa Lafe Stanley and their trip to the Centennial year state fair in 1958. Many of machinery hill’s acres from ’58 have since been given over to a junior-sized midway, skateboarding ramps and the like, catering to a much younger crowd than those who used to make the “hill” the fair’s main attraction. I recall climbing to the high seats on fancy new tractors. How different from the old rust-and-yellow Minneapolis Molines on Grandpa’s farm on Maine Prairie. They, with their hand clutches and distant brakes, were the tractors I was learning to drive. I was astounded to see a brightly painted manure spreader so clean someone could actually ride in it. That possibility had never even occurred to me. But more exciting to this pre-teen was the magician up on the hill. I was totally riveted as he demonstrated his skills with flair. From the front of the small crowd that gathered around, I watched intently as he took three large stainless steel rings and hit them together, resulting in shining intertwined circles. He called me up to personally verify that each ring was solid – no tricks, only magic. He invited me to take the loose rings and put them together as he had done. When I couldn’t, he grasped them in one hand and waved his wand over them with the other. Suddenly they were together! A salt-water taffy stand is still in place outside the food building, and I bypassed it again without spending a penny. I recall Grandpa had refused to buy saltwater taffy at the centennial. “We can make better taffy than that at home,” he announced. His grandchildren held him to his promise that next week back at the farm. Grandpa was missing the mechanized contraptions that pull the taffy to the desired consistency. Instead, little hands were put to work, and got burned by the hot taffy – a memory that comes easily to mind, though I struggle unsuccessfully to capture the illusive memory of its taste. I know for sure that our home creation had considerably less variety in flavors and colors than the hawker at the fair had offered. My tender hands were so very different from the dark, rugged, rough and permanently curved hands that carried heavy pails of feed as we headed for the chicken house in ’58. I appreciated those hands preceding mine to lift up clucking old hens from their nesting boxes while my smaller hands reached below his fingers to steal their eggs. Ashamed of my cowardice, I must admit I still left many eggs under hens that seemed more inclined to peck on my inexperienced fingers than to give up their smooth white or brown creations for my wire pail. Those rough hands were the ones that also reached into his pockets on Sunday mornings during church to come out with those pink candies I’m reminded of each time I see Pepto-Bismol (a not uncommon post-state fair experience). Those curved fingers and rough hands never hampered Grandpa’s personal claim to fame. He hand-sewed buckskin gloves, and I often watched him at his work as he steadily manipulated the needles and the waxed thread, or clutched those big sharp “sheers” (he never called them scissors) to cut the soft hides to match the hand-drawn patterns on cardboard. Now well into his 90s and retired in Tennessee, Professor Howard Hayes told me this summer – as have many others around the state and the nation – that he still had a pair of those gloves Lafe made him more than 40 years ago. My own pair is completely worn out, though I keep them anyway. I also have a pair of small moccasins Grandpa sewed for us in his last years, before the children who were to wear them were even born. Gyroscopes were big at the fair in the centennial year. Grandpa bought one for me though I was a bit young to wind the string and pull it fast enough to demonstrate the gyroscope’s impressive capabilities: spinning on a sharp point or sliding steadily up and down a string without falling off, even though all of its weight is unsupported, perpendicular to the string it glides on. That gyroscopic principle serves today’s new “people mover” Segways, described on occasion as “people on a stick” and touted as the answer for moving around tirelessly in such settings as the fair. I intruded myself into the conversation of a nearby couple who were discussing this new personal transportation system. They wondered how hard it must be to keep one upright. Hiding the fact of my limited understanding of the gyroscopic principle, I impressively explained to them how that little toy Grandpa bought for me at the fair nearly a half century ago (and the principle behind it discover another 40 years earlier) was the reason a Segway won’t fall over, unbelievable as it might seem to the uninitiated. Just for old time’s sake, as we headed in the general direction of the exit gate, Kathy and I stopped for a ride at Ye Old Mill, the one piece of the state fair almost unchanged since long before I was born. Somehow it seemed appropriate to visit the 1913 tunnel of love by way of celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary and reminiscing on other experiences that so many of my fellow fairgoers would consider distant history. oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Another favorite story added to our collection. Thank you, Duane Stanley. It proves that our own society members and descendents of the early settlers have much to contribute here in this column. Perhaps you’ve got one in your memory. Please feel free to share it with us. A busy season of celebrations in 2004 included the 75th anniversary of Land O’ Lakes Oil Company of Kimball and the 58th reunion of Kimball High School’s 1946 graduating class. Another chapter in Kimball’s rich history. Congratulations! For information, memberships, cookbooks and family history research, contact the Kimball Area Historical Society at P.O. Box 100, Kimball MN 55353, or call (320) 398-5743 or 398-5250, or (800) 252-2521 from out of the area. Improving community life with historic preservation.
